Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to Reading the Forested Landscape

Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to Reading the Forested Landscape

Author: Tom Wessels

Publisher: The Countryman Press

Published: 2010-09-20

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 1581578571

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Take some of the mystery out of a walk in the woods with this new field guide from the author of Reading the Forested Landscape. Thousands of readers have had their experience of being in a forest changed forever by reading Tom Wessels's Reading the Forested Landscape. Was this forest once farmland? Was it logged in the past? Was there ever a major catastrophe like a fire or a wind storm that brought trees down? Now Wessels takes that wonderful ability to discern much of the history of the forest from visual clues and boils it all down to a manageable field guide that you can take out to the woods and use to start playing forest detective yourself. Wessels has created a key—a fascinating series of either/or questions—to guide you through the process of analyzing what you see. You’ll feel like a woodland Sherlock Holmes. No walk in the woods will ever be the same.


New England's Roadside Ecology

New England's Roadside Ecology

Author: Tom Wessels

Publisher: Timber Press

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 1643260944

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Step Out of Your Car and Right into Nature! New England’s Roadside Ecology guides you through 30 spectacular natural sites, all within an easy walk from the road. The sites include the forests, wetlands, alpines, dunes, and geologic ecosystems that make up New England. Author Tom Wessels is the perfect guide. Each entry starts with the brief description of the hike's level of difficulty—all are gentle to moderate and cover no more than two miles. Entries also include turn-by-turn directions and clear descriptions of the flora, fauna, and fungi you are likely to encounter along the way. New England’s Roadside Ecology is a must-have guide for outdoor enthusiasts, hikers, and tourists in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.


Reading the Landscape of America

Reading the Landscape of America

Author: May Theilgaard Watts

Publisher: Nature Study Guild Publishers

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780912550237

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this natural history classic, the author takes the reader on field trips to landscapes across America, both domesticated and wild. She shows how to read the stories written in the land, interpreting the clues laid down by history, culture, and natural forces. A renowned teacher, writer and conservationist in her native Midwest, Watts studied with Henry Cowles, the pioneering American ecologist. She was the first to explain his theories of plant succesion to the general public. Her graceful, witty essays, with charming illustrations by the author, are still relevant and engaging today, as she invites us to see the world around us with fresh eyes.


The Myth of Progress

The Myth of Progress

Author: Tom Wessels

Publisher: UPNE

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1611684161

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A provocative critique of Western progress from a scientific perspective


The Forest Landscape Restoration Handbook

The Forest Landscape Restoration Handbook

Author: Stewart Maginnis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-04

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1136553983

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Forest loss and degradation have caused a decline in the quality of ecosystem services around the world. But fixing the problem takes more than just planting trees; practitioners increasingly realize that a landscape approach is essential. This handbook, authored and edited by international authorities in the field of forestry, is the first practical guide to using forest landscape restoration (FLR) to repair the damage done to forest lands by poor land management practice. Using research backed by respected institutions such as ITTO and the World Conservation Union (IUCN), it explains how to increase the resilience of landscapes and the communities they support through FLR. The main aim of FLR is not to re-establish pristine forest, even if this were possible; rather, the objective is to make landscapes more resilient and thereby keep future management options open. It also aims to support communities as they strive to increase and sustain the benefits they derive from land management. This book explains the concept of FLR and guides the reader through the steps that must be taken to put it into practice. It is an indispensable aid for practitioners in all aspects of forestry and natural resource management.


New England Forests Through Time

New England Forests Through Time

Author: David R. Foster

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 84

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Over the past three hundred years New England's landscape has been transformed. The forests were cleared; the land was farmed intensively through the mid-nineteenth century and then was allowed to reforest naturally as agriculture shifted west. Today, in many ways the region is more natural than at any time since the American Revolution. This fascinating natural history is essential background for anyone interested in New England's ecology, wildlife, or landscape. In New England Forests through Time these historical and environmental lessons are told through the world-renowned dioramas in Harvard's Fisher Museum. These remarkable models have introduced New England's landscape to countless visitors and have appeared in many ecology, forestry, and natural history texts. This first book based on the dioramas conveys the phenomenal history of the land, the beauty of the models, and new insights into nature.


Two Trees Make a Forest

Two Trees Make a Forest

Author: Jessica J. Lee

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1646220005

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This "stunning journey through a country that is home to exhilarating natural wonders, and a scarring colonial past . . . makes breathtakingly clear the connection between nature and humanity, and offers a singular portrait of the complexities inherent to our ideas of identity, family, and love" (Refinery29). A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities. Two Trees Make a Forest is a genre–shattering book encompassing history, travel, nature, and memoir, an extraordinary narrative showing how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories.


Nature Next Door

Nature Next Door

Author: Ellen Stroud

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2012-12-15

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0295804459

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The once denuded northeastern United States is now a region of trees. Nature Next Door argues that the growth of cities, the construction of parks, the transformation of farming, the boom in tourism, and changes in the timber industry have together brought about a return of northeastern forests. Although historians and historical actors alike have seen urban and rural areas as distinct, they are in fact intertwined, and the dichotomies of farm and forest, agriculture and industry, and nature and culture break down when the focus is on the history of Northeastern woods. Cities, trees, mills, rivers, houses, and farms are all part of a single transformed regional landscape. In an examination of the cities and forests of the northeastern United States-with particular attention to the woods of Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Vermont-Ellen Stroud shows how urbanization processes there fostered a period of recovery for forests, with cities not merely consumers of nature but creators as well. Interactions between city and hinterland in the twentieth century Northeast created a new wildness of metropolitan nature: a reforested landscape intricately entangled with the region's cities and towns.


Forests in Time

Forests in Time

Author: John D. Aber

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 9780300115376

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Eastern Hemlock, massive and majestic, has played a unique role in structuring northeastern forest environments, from Nova Scotia to Wisconsin and through the Appalachian Mountains to North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama. A "foundation species" influencing all the species in the ecosystem surrounding it, this iconic North American tree has long inspired poets and artists as well as naturalists and scientists. Five thousand years ago, the hemlock collapsed as a result of abrupt global climate change. Now this iconic tree faces extinction once again because of an invasive insect, the hemlock woolly adelgid. Drawing from a century of studies at Harvard University's Harvard Forest, one of the most well-regarded long-term ecological research programs in North America, the authors explore what hemlock's modern decline can tell us about the challenges facing nature and society in an era of habitat changes and fragmentation, as well as global change.